Green Shutters, a new film by Jean Becker, features Gérard Depardieu as an aging actor facing his great love, played by Fanny Ardant. In theaters August 24.
After Le Collier rouge, released in 2018, Jean Becker, 84, is back behind the camera with Les Volets vert.
The film paints the portrait of a sacred monster, Jules Maugin (Gérard Depardieu), an actor at the height of his glory in the 70s. Under the famous personality, the intimacy of a man is revealed.
The feature film is adapted from the novel of the same name written by Georges Simenon, published in 1950 by Presses de la Cité. Ironically, Gérard Depardieu played Maigret in the cinema this year, also adapted from the Belgian novelist.
GENESIS OF THE PROJECT
In addition, the project was initiated by Depardieu in 2017. During a conversation, the actor advised producers Michèle and Laurent Pétin to read the book.
The producers buy the rights to the novel from its author’s son, John Simenon. They then commission Jean-Loup Dabadie to adapt it.
The famous director wrote a first version of the screenplay before dying in May 2020 at the age of 81. Bertrand de Labbey, agent of Dabadie and Depardieu, then proposed to the producers to entrust the project to John Becker.
Very excited, the director seizes the Green shutters. He is on familiar ground since he had already filmed Gérard Depardieu in Elisa (1995) and La Tête en friche (2010).
It is with determination that Jean Becker works on the project. “He quickly makes his way through the script and puts it “in his hand”, adding personal touches, sometimes adapting the dialogues to the actors he chooses”confide Michèle and Laurent Pétin.
A META FILM ON DEPARDIEU?
According to Jean Becker, Les Volets Verts is a chronicle centered on the life of an actor and everything that happens around him (his driver, his dresser, etc.).
“I thought it related quite well everything that I had been able to observe personally in the lives of these actors that I knew well”explains the filmmaker.
According to the director, the actors live a supercharged existence, all the time or very often performing on the stage, on a film set or elsewhere.
“Maugin is asked to be someone else while trying to keep his personality, forced to seek emotions deep within himself even if it means hurting himself. Often, they need to help each other to achieve support it either with alcohol or with drugs: for Maugin it is alcohol”explains Jean Becker.
AN ICONIC DUO
In addition, Fanny Ardant and Gérard Depardieu have already worked together a dozen times. For Jean Becker, they refer to those couples of very well-known actors who existed at one time, such as Simone Valère and Jean Desailly, Madeleine Renaud and Jean-Louis Barrault or Delphine Seyrig and Sami Frey.
“In life, Depardieu feels a deep love for Fanny Ardant. So their complicity in life is also found in the film and it is not necessary to explain it. In Les Volets Verts, he behaves like a vis -towards her because he feels that she is going to escape him”he points out.
The Green Shutters was released in theaters on August 24.